Bucks Man Expects 700 For Annual Passover Feast

Although the Jewish holiday of Passover is still more than two months off, Richard Carmosin has already started planning his Seder.

The Seder is the traditional feast that comes at the beginning of the holiday. For Jews, it is a time for family to gather.

Carmosin invites 700 people to his Seder.

Most of them are elderly people from the Philadelphia area with few relatives with whom they can share the holiday.

"We bring together people and make sure they have food for the holidays," says the Trumbauersville man. "It's amazing to see that many people in one room."

The Seder is given courtesy of the Golden Slipper Club, the Philadelphia-based fraternal organization that provides a number of philanthropic services in the region. One of its main projects is the operation of the 744-acre Golden Slipper Camp for disadvantaged children near Bartonsville in Monroe County. The club also operates a home for the aged in Philadelphia.

And it stages the annual Seder, which is the work of the club's Going Out Committee. Carmosin, a 50-year-old research chemist, is the chairman of the committee.

"The committee was set up to help senior citizens -- to help them get out of their everyday environments," he says. "If they live in a retirement home, we see if we can get them out so they can enjoy themselves."

Actually, the Seder is only one of the activities of the committee. Throughout the year, the committee will lease buses and run trips for elderly people to minor league baseball games or to area museums. Each year, the committee arranges a trip for the senior citizens to the camp near Bartonsville. And the Going Out Committee has occasionally hired musicians and singers to perform right in the retirement homes.

Of course, it isn't cheap. The Seder, for example, will cost the club $20,000 this year.

Carmosin says he joined the club and became active in the Going Out Committee because he wanted to do more than just donate money to charities. A member of the Or Ami synagogue in Lafayette Hill, Carmosin says, he learned about the club's existence from a fellow congregant.

"I heard about the Slipper Club from somebody at my synagogue," he says. "She said, `You're just right for this club. It's the kind of thing you ought to get involved in.' It's a big draw for a lot of people who are used to making donations without knowing where their money is going."

Carmosin, his wife, Susan, and the couple's three children moved to Trumbauersville about eight years ago.

The club was founded 70 years ago by a group of philanthropists who were originally card-playing chums. It now has nearly 1,000 members in the Delaware Valley.

Stuart Coren, a spokesman for the club, says that in addition to operating the camp and the retirement home, the club also gives out scholarships to college students who need financial help as well as aid to families who may need assistance for special needs.

That activity falls under the club's Human Needs and Services Committee. Carmosin is also a member of that committee, which he says does not limit its work to the Jewish community.

He says: "Somebody may need a hearing aid and they can't afford it -- we'll buy it for them. Or, somebody may need a new pair of reading glasses. We'll buy the glasses. Usually, social workers from nursing homes or hospitals will contact our office and ask us to look into the case. We once bought a special car seat for a quadriplegic child so his mother could take him in the car."

Carmosin says the club has also helped out families with donations of food, clothing and, occasionally, cash.

"We want the community to know there is a Jewish organization out there doing charitable work," he says. "We want to be able to call people up and say to them, `Have you heard about the Golden Slipper Club?' And people will say to us, `Yes, they do nice things.'"